Offshore drillers could learn from aviation

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2013 file photo, officials inspect an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 which made an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport in Takamatsu, western Japan. The joint U.S. and Japanese investigation into the plane's battery problems has shifted from the battery-maker to the manufacturer of a monitoring system Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE less

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2013 file photo, officials inspect an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 which made an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport in Takamatsu, western Japan. The joint U.S. and Japanese ... more

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A member of an NTSB investigation team examines pieces of damaged electrode coils from a battery cell that resulted in a fire aboard a Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane at Logan International Airport in Boston earlier this month as she works inside an investigation lab at National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Headquarters in Washington, DC, on January 24, 2013. The state-of-the-art composite aircraft continues to be grounded as the investigation into the cause of the thermal damage continues. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEBSAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images less

A member of an NTSB investigation team examines pieces of damaged electrode coils from a battery cell that resulted in a fire aboard a Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane at Logan International ... more

Photo: SAUL LOEB, Staff

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National Transportation Safety Boards Joseph Kolly, holds an opened damaged battery cell case from the Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner that caught fire at Logan International Airport in Boston on Jan. 7, at the NTSB laboratory in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. In the foreground is the casing that holds 8 cells of batteries. The battery that caught fire in Boston shows evidence of short-circuiting and a chemical reaction known as "thermal runaway," in which an increase in temperature causes progressively hotter temperatures, federal accident investigators said. However, it's not clear to investigators which came first, the short-circuiting or the thermal runaway. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) less

National Transportation Safety Boards Joseph Kolly, holds an opened damaged battery cell case from the Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner that caught fire at Logan International Airport in Boston on Jan. 7, ... more

Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, STF

Offshore drillers could learn from aviation

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They did, in fact, ground the planes.

After the recent problems with batteries on the Boeing 787, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all of the aircraft flown by U.S. carriers removed from service.

Rather than using commercial aviation as an excuse - "they don't ground all planes when one crashes" was a common retort to the drilling moratorium that followed the Deepwater Horizon disaster - the offshore energy industry should use it as a model for improving safety.

Among safety experts, the exploding batteries aboard the Dreamliners are known as a leading risk indicator. In other words, they could be a sign of a bigger problem.

No one lost their lives in a Dreamliner incident. No one was injured. No one has said the aircraft is unsafe, and the cause of the battery problems - one burst into flames on an empty plane at a gate in Tokyo - remains under investigation.

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The only U.S. carrier flying 787s was United Airlines, whose chief executive, Jeff Smisek, praised the probe and said he remains confident in the plane's design.

While the 787 problems didn't result in all planes being grounded, the FAA did determine that the leading indicators posed enough threat to public safety to take that model out of service.

Few industries have assembled more information about human and mechanical fallibility than commercial aviation, which is why air travel is the safest form of transportation. All that data has created a process that helps the industry spot and respond to leading risk indicators before they become catastrophes.

Public confidence

And the transparency of the process reinforces public confidence. The National Transportation Safety Board, the independent U.S. agency that investigates aviation accidents, has provided frequent updates on its investigation.

By contrast, the energy industry has long resisted such public scrutiny, even though in the time since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the economic impact of offshore accidents, not to mention the potential loss of life, has underscored the public's concern for drilling safety. New regulations were adopted, but they lack transparency.

No independent agency, for example, collects or reviews leading risk indicators. In most cases, the data isn't even publicly available. If the energy industry ran an airline, 787s would remain in the skies, the potential safety risks hidden behind claims that because they haven't fallen from the sky, they must be safe.

"Transparency - or the lack thereof - is a major defect in our industry," said David Pritchard, a Houston petroleum engineer and drilling safety expert. "Competition is the major excuse used to limit sharing of data and information. Process safety's assurance should not be left to competitive drivers."

The 'near misses'

Obviously, not every incident requires a public hearing, but every incident should be recorded and made publicly available in a searchable database.

Only then can the industry know how many "near misses" it's had. How many other problems with malfunction- ing blowout preventers, for example, pre- dated the Deepwater Horizon accident?

The data for offshore safety is scant and general - and incomplete. In 2003, regulators proposed requiring reports for all hydrocarbon releases from offshore facilities.

The industry called the requirement too burdensome, even though many companies already compiled such information internally. In the end, operators are required to report only releases that result in the shutdown of the rig or platform.

The number of those incidents never exceeded 17 a year in the past five years, according to an analysis by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. As of 2010, the Gulf had 7,000 active leases, 3,600 structures and as many as 600 wells were drilled, all involving hundreds of operators and contractors.

Most companies, in other words, didn't have releases that resulted in shutdown, so the data isn't statistically significant enough to establish trends or set targets for improving safety.

Bird strikes

By contrast, you or I can go online and search a massive database of aviation incident reports, from serious accidents to bird strikes. You can sort that data by state, by airport, by aircraft type, and even the species of bird.

(In the past year, 1,037 bird strikes were reported in Texas, including military and business jets.)

The probe into the 787 battery failures continued this week, and until the cause of the leading risk indicator is determined and fixed, the planes will remain on the ground.